What is common practice to maintain the Lightroom Previews.lrdata folder?

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MartyD

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When I ask a question like this the retired teacher in me always comes out. Did I not pay attention when this was covered in an earlier post? Is it in one of Steve's videos but I didn't really understand it at the time? Was I absent that day? Did my dog eat it? But here goes!!

I am currently running my Windows PC off of a 500GB drive and the available space is shrinking. I don't store any photos or documents on that drive so the previews.lrdata folder is the main storage culprit and it is almost 200GB. The previews.lrdata files contains the basic previews and I don't believe there is a way in LR to delete the basic preview. The 1:1 previews can be deleted but I think the only way to remove basic previews is to delete the previes.lrdata folder. Is it a good practice to delete the previews.lrdata folder and rebuild previews as needed to eliminate folder bloat or is there a better practice? Is there a way in LR to delete basic previews no longer needed.
 
I store everything on external hard drives. Pictures, catalog files, everything. I would never want my catalog files on my internal drive. As you say, not enough room.
 
I store everything on external hard drives. Pictures, catalog files, everything. I would never want my catalog files on my internal drive. As you say, not enough room.
Space is not as much a concern as does the previews.lrdata file become bloated and cause performance issues. The big issue for me is that I also shoot a lot of sports photos. I might shoot as many as 70,000 images during a year, then archive the year, and actually remove the collections from LR but I am not sure if that removes the basic previews.
 
I know in the library module under the menu at the top called library there are choices including discard smart previews. I honestly don't know every in or out of it. I generate smart previews on import and store the catalog and related files on the ssd part of the hard drive and forget about it. Other than program files and Lightroom catalog and related files I don't put anything on the ssd.

Another way to free up space on the ssd is to delete some of the old backups of the Lightroom catalog. I don't believe they automatically delete them for you. These are in the backup folder under the Lightroom folder. Keep 4 to 6 months worth on the ssd and discard the rest or store them on an external drive.
 
I know in the library module under the menu at the top called library there are choices including discard smart previews. I honestly don't know every in or out of it. I generate smart previews on import and store the catalog and related files on the ssd part of the hard drive and forget about it. Other than program files and Lightroom catalog and related files I don't put anything on the ssd.

Another way to free up space on the ssd is to delete some of the old backups of the Lightroom catalog. I don't believe they automatically delete them for you. These are in the backup folder under the Lightroom folder. Keep 4 to 6 months worth on the ssd and discard the rest or store them on an external drive.
Thanks, I can delete smart previews and 1:1 previews but I don't know if there is a way to delete basic previews and if they are needed. The backups just backup the catalog and not the previews so my LR catalog backups are less than 1GB so not really a problem. I am just wondering if there is an advantage/disadvantage to deleting the folder from time to time or if there is a better way to manage it. The previews.lrdata is recreated when LR is launched if it does not exist. My previews.lrdata folder contained 195GB, 171,932 files, in 61,854 folders.

I am going to replace my Gen3 NVMe SSD when the Gen4 drives are a little cheaper. I will increase my system drive form 500GB to 1TB when I do that so it is not so much the size but the efficiency of the folder that I am curios about.
 
Thanks, I can delete smart previews and 1:1 previews but I don't know if there is a way to delete basic previews and if they are needed. The backups just backup the catalog and not the previews so my LR catalog backups are less than 1GB so not really a problem. I am just wondering if there is an advantage/disadvantage to deleting the folder from time to time or if there is a better way to manage it. The previews.lrdata is recreated when LR is launched if it does not exist. My previews.lrdata folder contained 195GB, 171,932 files, in 61,854 folders.

I am going to replace my Gen3 NVMe SSD when the Gen4 drives are a little cheaper. I will increase my system drive form 500GB to 1TB when I do that so it is not so much the size but the efficiency of the folder that I am curios about.

I believe the basic preview is imbedded in the raw file, if we are talking about the same thing, as in what you would see in the import module, but hopefully someone more expert will chime in. I concentrate on the art and know enough computer science to get into trouble but not out of trouble.
 
I might be missing something, but I'm not understanding why you have your lrdata file on your internal HD if the picture files are stored externally. Why not store the lrdata files on the same external drive as the corresponding picture files? I have a catalog on each of my various external drives, and this makes things pretty easy. Again, I might be missing your point, and if so, sorry. :)
 
I might be missing something, but I'm not understanding why you have your lrdata file on your internal HD if the picture files are stored externally. Why not store the lrdata files on the same external drive as the corresponding picture files? I have a catalog on each of my various external drives, and this makes things pretty easy. Again, I might be missing your point, and if so, sorry. :)
I have just kept my applications and my LR catalog on my system drive because it is the fastest drive. I only have one catalog and the previews.lrdata file resides in the same directory as the LR catalog. Maybe there is no speed advantage for keeping the catalog on my fastest drive.
 
I might be missing something, but I'm not understanding why you have your lrdata file on your internal HD if the picture files are stored externally. Why not store the lrdata files on the same external drive as the corresponding picture files? I have a catalog on each of my various external drives, and this makes things pretty easy. Again, I might be missing your point, and if so, sorry. :)

I think most people keep their Lightroom catalog on the fastest drive and the image files elsewhere. The image files can be anywhere in any number of drives and folders and the Lightroom catalog just points to the raw files and saves a recipe for your edits, but doesn't do anything to alter the raw files. One of the first surprises of Lightroom is that there is no save menu.
 
You can delete the previews.lrdata folder if you really want to - it just means that you need to go have a coffee while lightroom rebuilds it and creates the ones you need, the next time you want to work on anything. If space isn’t an issue, I wouldn’t bother.
 
I think most people keep their Lightroom catalog on the fastest drive and the image files elsewhere. The image files can be anywhere in any number of drives and folders and the Lightroom catalog just points to the raw files and saves a recipe for your edits, but doesn't do anything to alter the raw files. One of the first surprises of Lightroom is that there is no save menu.

Okay, I can see why some people would want to do that. For me, with terabyte after terabyte of picture files, I need to group photos into manageable numbers and have a catalog for each group.
 
Okay, I can see why some people would want to do that. For me, with terabyte after terabyte of picture files, I need to group photos into manageable numbers and have a catalog for each group.

The Lightroom catalog or catalogs take up very little space. It's mostly just recipes and previews. It is the raw files that eat the storage. One Lightroom catalog can link to any combination of drives/folders. I think a lot of people keep all photos in one catalog and organize virtually within that one catalog. Whatever works to stay organized is a good system in my view. I also might be missing the boat but in my KISS system every raw file from 2021 goes in the 'photos 2021' folder. On the new year I'll start 'photos 2022' Lightroom has all years in one catalog. I could see reasons for multiple catalogs. A wedding shooter would have a separate catalog for each client, or a product photographer keeping clients separate.
 
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